Kaori Oda

"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March 2023. Consisting of only Sakamoto and his piano, Opus features the final live performances of 20 songs that Sakamoto meticulously curated to encapsulate his distinguished 40-year career.

Cenotes—sources of water that in ancient Mayan civilization were said to connect the real world and the afterlife. The past and present of the people living in and around them intersect, and distant memories echo throughout immersive scenes of light and darkness.

A storyteller of peace serves as a guide in the “Gama”—natural caves where many local people lost their lives during the Battle of Okinawa. The woman in blue standing by his side represents the intersection of the present and the past.

"My goal is not education, but liberation." In February 2024, a filmmaking workshop takes place in Fukushima under the guidance of the Hungarian master, Béla Tarr. Observing him mentor the students offers a glimpse into his unique perspective on cinema and his profound approach to the art of film.

A shadow reveals its form from the darkness underground. It communicates with a woman's consciousness, and she begins to see fragmentary memories that transcend time and place, as if daydreaming. The shadow takes on the woman's form and travels. Situating itself in places invisible from above ground, it traces what once happened there, listening to the human memories buried in the flow of time.

8mm short shot at night from the Osaka bay where the river flows into the sea

A moving image work from director Kaori Oda.

After her mother’s death, Nao retreats to a Zen temple to wrestle with grief. Blending family archives, hand-drawn animation and performance art, this seductively meditative documentary explores suffering, and the gentle art of transcending it.

A moving image work from Kaori Oda, inspired by the film "Desperate Man Blues".

Moments in the life of a young Japanese filmmaker in Bosnia, charged with acoustic and visual poetry. Buoyant and essayistic entries in a process of self- and world-reassurance.

In a train from Sarajevo to Zagreb, looking at the landscape of the foreign country from a window, I somehow felt nostalgic and a question crossed my mind. “What is my first memory?” Could primitive memories be found and shared in human beings? If collective memories exist in us as what is inherited, I would like to know what it is like and to capture them by camera and sound recorder.

Miners in a Bosnian coal mine. The camera silently watches over the miners working tirelessly amidst endless noise and the flickering light of lanterns.

A woman descends into a surreal odyssey of fragmented memories after waking with excruciating neck pain.

A train runs at night. Goldfish float in passenger’s dreams.

A cowherd, sheep, and the wind, all have an equal presence in the village. Death and life are one and indivisible.

When Kacchi came back home for summer break from abroad, she came out to her family as a homosexual. Her mother and father couldn't take it and answered in negative. Though Kacchi had a depression for their reactions, she decided to face her family again throughout a filmmaking about the 'coming-out'.

Sexual abuse has been characterized as a “murder of the spirit.” But is this a suffering that one person must bear alone? Beyond despair, there is hope, a faint ray of light from the spirit. A friend of the filmmaker suffers from PTSD, having flashbacks of sexual abuse. Having witnessed this, the filmmaker meets a photographer who is also a survivor and decides to make a film. The long production process lasted eight years. What is the nature of the despair, and the hope, that reside deep within these people suffering from PTSD conditions including regret, murderous impulses, depression, insomnia, detachment, and suicidal thoughts? The director appears on screen, questioning the very meaning of making this film. He tries to see light in how they live, looking upward from the depths of suffering.

Karaoke Cafe BOSA is located in the suburbs of Osaka. It’s a place where elderly neighbors gather to chat and sing. The film captures BOSA in these days of unrest as a time capsule of the Anthropocene.

Recorded the restoration work done for the reopening of Tadao Ando's "Chapel of the Wind" in Rokko, Kobe. It tells the length of time by showing the mold and moss that eroded the concrete. When the closed door is opened, the stopped time starts flowing again.

Old 8mm family film and images of fireworks combined together.

Inspired by the acclaimed Korean documentary My Love, Don't Cross That River, the poignant series MY LOVE documents a year in the lives of six elderly couples from around the world. Globe-trotting through Brazil, India, Japan, Korea, the U.S., and Spain, the six-part docuseries gets to the heart of long-lasting love.